Help with explaining new SNF home to my mom!

JustPyrfect

Good morning everyone! This group is such an awesome group! I very much appreciate everyone’s questions, answers, and great suggestions!

I had posted a question several weeks ago regarding moving my mom into a SNF. As it turns out, she had a fall, which required her to be hospitalized for 4 days. That was my opening to having her moved to a SNF/LTC that I had already visited and wanted to use. Somehow I thought getting her there was going to be the toughest part, but now I am struggling with the daily questions about “when Can I go home”. My current answer is that her doctor has ordered her to get inpatient physical therapy and rehabilitation until she becomes strong enough to go home, and he is the only one that can tell us what it is time. I tell her it is no longer in my control or hers. Now I realize that this will never happen. She is 88, has Alzheimer’s, is very weak and unable to ambulate well on her own any longer. She was living in an independent living apartment, with caregivers daily, but we are unable to afford 24 hour care. And of course, all of her falls happen overnight. I currently have her at a nice skilled nursing facility that does take Medicaid. It pains me to see her crying every day because she doesn’t like there. It’s difficult to see the pain and sadness on her face, and missing her pets & home. I know she doesn’t want to live like this, or in a facility like this, but I know it’s the best thing for her and for me as I am the sole caregiver.

I am aware that it will take time for her to transition and to except this. In the meantime, I’m feeling very torn about what I should be telling her. On the one hand, I am telling her the truth, on the other hand I’m not telling her the whole story - i know it will just upset her, and she won’t remember it anyway.

What has everybody else told their LO in these situation?

Has anyone had to separate their LO from a beloved pet? Her concern is really strong when it comes to seeing her pets again. The SNF where she is, will allow me to bring him in for a visit, but I’m not sure this is a good idea.

Thank you, everyone!

Shan

I’m so sorry you are going through this. I know first hand how hard it is to have a scared, lonely, sad mom who cries and wants me to take her out of her MCF that we looked so hard to find for her, and she says she wants to live with me, which after being her respite weekend care when she was in AL, I know is not a possibility because of her agitation, refusal to let us help her do anything, and her terribly disruptive lack of even a semi normal sleep schedule. She’s been in MC for just over 3 months and we are still in transition trying to get her acclimated there. She often tells me she doesn’t know how much longer she wants to stay there and she thinks she wants to live with me. I find it is best to get her talking about what she likes and doesn’t like about her new home to validate her feelings, and then I tell her “let’s just take it one day at a time. No place is perfect and moving is a lot of work so let’s try one more day.” It usually gets us over the hump of her obsessing and wanting to leave and then I can distract her with music, reminiscing, making her laugh etc. Since your mom was moved due to a fall, you can keep putting the blame on the doctor - she needs more therapy, she isn’t strong enough yet. Then if it gets to the point where she’s no longer believing that fiblet, you can change the story to “they are doing repairs at her previous home”, gas leak, fumigating for bugs, water leak caused damage that needs repairing. You just keep making up excuses as long as needed. For your own mental health, it’s important to understand unhappiness, anxiety, and not feeling like anywhere is home is part of the disease. Even when my mom was in my home for long weekends to give my sister who was primary care when she was in AL a break, she had moments where she was dressed, packed her bags, and insisting I bring her home - to the AL she often told me she hated and wanted to leave. So just know that at this point your goal is safety and somewhere she gets the care she needs. Happy at this point isn’t a sustainable goal even though I wish to heaven and back it was. Now, about the issue of missing her beloved pets, I have first hand experience of how my mom’s extreme attachment to her dog she’s had for 10 years, since he was a puppy, is making it very difficult to figure out how and when to separate them. In your case, because your mom had to go somewhere the pets can’t stay, you can just keep blaming the separation on this “temporary” stay until she is well enough to go back to them. I know it feels cruel to keep stringing her along with hopes you know will never materialize. But for her emotional well being, it actually is the most loving way to handle it. Since her facility would allow visits with the pet, maybe try one short visit and see how it goes. If it brings her peace then you can continue, but if it causes her to be more sad and miss them more, well that’s an answer to help you decide how to navigate this too. At this point my mom and her dog are still together in MC: yes, I found the elusive unicorn, a MC that would allow her to keep her dog and help her care for him. However, we are getting close to needing to remove him for his own safety because Mom obsesses over feeding him and insists on trying to feed him her meals which make him sick. Plus she refuses to let staff take him outside to do his “jobs” and they have to keep approaching her to finally get her to cooperate. So we know it’s only a matter of time before we have to make the heart wrenching decision to separate them and then see if visits help or harm the situation. My biggest fear is that when we do have to remove Angel, my mom is going to get so emotionally distraught that her disease won’t allow her to process it without becoming uncontrollable. The D of N at her MC fears she will need to be admitted to geriatric psych when it happens for a while because her behaviors may make her uncontrollable for the MC staff. We had a small sampling of what a short separation did to her when I had to take Angel to the vet the last time she fed him something that didn’t agree with him. For 2 1/2 hours she was pacing and crying and inconsolable. So while I don’t yet have helpful advice on how to take the pet away, because we aren’t there yet and haven’t figured it out for ourselves yet either, I can empathize with how excruciatingly miserable this all is. I really wish neither of us, or anyone on this board for that matter has to be going through what we are. Take care of yourself and know that your mom is lucky to have such a caring daughter.